


Secrets and Lies

by OveliaGirlHaditRight



Category: Happy Death Day (2017)
Genre: Canon, Canon Compliant, F/M, Gen, Happy Death Day 2U - Freeform, Happy Death Day 3, On Hiatus, Post-Happy Death Day 2U
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-30
Updated: 2019-10-30
Packaged: 2021-01-13 11:13:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21243158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OveliaGirlHaditRight/pseuds/OveliaGirlHaditRight
Summary: My attempt at a third "Happy Death Day". Danielle is in the loop dying this time, and Tree has to help her despite having no memories of the loop.





	Secrets and Lies

While Tree had been serious about making Danielle relive days—to hopefully make her a better person that way, since the government was clearly hellbent on getting someone into this experiment—she hadn’t wanted any harm to come to her.  
  
For better or for worse (and yes, sometimes it did feel like worse), Danielle was Tree’s friend: so she didn't want her dying like she had, even if she also came back.  
  
Dying hurt like a _bitch_. So as it stood, Tree wasn't willing to put anyone else through that kind of trauma.  
  
So the plan, then, was for Tree to just try and snub Danielle every day that she was in the loop, so she would hopefully come to realize that she wasn’t the center of the universe like she thought she was. And that maybe she didn't even want to be popular, if she had to be mean to get there.  
  
But as Tree thought back on it all now—after everything had gone to hell in a handbasket, and she was having to try and help a fretting Danielle figure out who was murdering _her_—she could easily say why things had ended up becoming as bad as they did.  
  
…  
  
**A Few Months Earlier**  
  
Tree couldn't say for sure—because maybe after everything she’d gone through, she was just paranoid at this point—but when Danielle, looking absolutely tragic, met Tree at the lunch table’s outside on one day of the loop… she knew that things didn’t bode well.  
  
She literally fell into the bench, as she seemed to want to grab Tree’s feet, as she cried and didn’t even try to knock off some of the sweat that had taken up her body: something that the old Danielle always would have been conscious to do.  
  
"...Danielle, what's wrong?" Tree asked, finally finding her voice but already dreading what she thought she knew the answer to be.  
  
"Gee, I wonder what could be wrong, Tree?! Could it be that some psycho in a baby mask just fucking murdered me, but then the day rewound like you said it did for you?!”  
  
Now, if this had been the Danielle that Tree had always known in the past, she never would have felt bad by seemingly trying to put the blame on Tree with her comment.  
  
But when she covered her own mouth with wide-eyes, and choked out an apology, Tree could tell that she was already somewhat changing for the better… which meant that everything she was saying was real.  
  
"But that doesn't make any sense!" Tree argued, furious now. “Because what kind of official American organization sanctions murder?” But as soon as the words left her mouth, Tree knew how stupid she was—with all she knew about history—for having thinking otherwise, and now she was just livid at herself and would have kicked herself if she could have.  
  
“Tree, what are you talking abou-” But Tree couldn’t let her finish the sentence, or even look Danielle in the eye at this point.  
  
“N-nothing, I’ll talk to you later, Danielle… and I promise you that everything will be okay.” And Tree scampered off to find Carter for help, praying that her words would be true.  
  
…  
  
If Tree was being honest with herself? There was a part of her that was terrified that she'd somehow soon be the one in the loop again... as wasn't that what happened last time, unfortunately? It had started out with Ryan, but then it had just been her again. But Tree kept this thought to herself, not wanting to will it into existence by saying it aloud.  
  
Right now—as she sat and ate at her and Carter’s favorite café to go to—Tree was working as hard as she could to help Danielle solve this mystery: even harder than she’d worked on her own, in some ways.  
  
Partly because the government was involved this time, and while it easily could have been one of them behind this it also could have been anyone from the Gregory and Stephanie conspiracy… or someone else.  
  
But also because this time it was Tree's... friend, Danielle, that was in danger, and Tree did want to protect her.  
  
When something happened to you, it was easy to brush it off... but when it happened to someone you cared for, it suddenly became so much worse.  
  
Tree was looking at all of the suspects that might have something against Danielle… and she was also trying to think of ways Danielle could easily tear the mask off anyone who went after her, even if they surprised her... but that wouldn’t necessarily be easy. Tree knew that from experience. When your fight or flight instinct kicked in, sometimes common sense just didn't work.  
  
It was when Tree was having the thoughts about Babyface’s mast that Carter joined her, dropping a sweet kiss to Tree's lips—that oh, she relished in after having nearly lost him—and he then took in her homework.  
  
"...So, DARPA really rewound the day on Danielle, huh? And I know they meant it to be harmless, like you joked... and that maybe her just reliving the same day over and over again might make her a better person like we wanted... But because of our luck, a psycho in a baby mask is still trying to kill her, huh?"  
  
And it was here that Tree began crying, despite herself, as her guilt for what she may have unwittingly put Danielle through hit her full force.  
  
Tree hadn't been kidding in the other timeline, when she'd said that she was sorry about how things had gone for her and Lori here—and that was to someone who had tried to kill her!—so she especially felt that way about Danielle.  
  
"I just don't think she deserves it," Tree explained now, as she figured in her heard from the way that Danielle had acted that this had already happened for her a few times. "...I'm happy for the person I am now because I went through it, I really am, but I don't think I deserved it, either. And Danielle hasn't really done anything worse than I ever did."  
  
Carter looked at Tree lovingly then, and she bet that he was amazed she could say that when Danielle had recently "stolen him away from her", among other things, but if he was thinking that, Tree didn't think it was an accomplishment at all... but then again, maybe the fact that she thought that just showed how far she’d come.  
  
"So, who do we think the killer is this time?" Tree asked Carter rather bitterly now, as it began seeming more and more likely to her that the things that had been at play the last times were once again. "More stupid people who are mad that a cheater won’t be with them?"  
  
Carter opened and closed his mouth a few times at Tree’s words and frowned, and she thought he might have been about to tell her not to be so hard on Lori, Stephanie, and herself—since Gregory had been the real villain in all of this—but instead, he'd seemed to come up with a different idea altogether.  
  
"...Tree? Do you think the quantum reactor could somehow make sentient life? I mean, it's clearly building up energy—...and then using it, sure—when it sends people into the loops. And unintentionally or not, it's retained a status quo that a person in a baby mask should be killing people... And what if it now thinks that's needed for balance, and if someone won't fit the bill it'll create that person to?  
  
Truthfully... as cute as it was that Carter was theorizing for her, Tree had wanted to stop his tirade a few times during it. She didn't really know quantum mechanics at all, and had only memorized equations of it, but even _she_ knew Carter's idea of science was whack and didn't truly add up.  
  
"...As... good as that scientific reasoning is there, cowboy… call me crazy, that I still have my doubts. If that _could_ ever work, I think SISSY would have to be activated a few more times, at least."  
  
Carter laughed at Tree's attempts at humor—that the girlish part of her definitely saw as a win—and smiling and holding hands, the two of them finished French fries, burgers, and shakes together... at which point Tree was nearly in a food coma and came home and went to bed... Though she was somewhat leery of this, because she wanted to be able to help Danielle if she needed her this night, but she tried to tell herself that surely she’d hear her if she screamed...  
  
Except that Tree didn't, much to her later shame, and in the morning—though what morning?—Danielle entered Tree's room crying, as she dove into her arms (and to Danielle's credit, her crying was only sniffles), and Tree remembered nothing.

**Author's Note:**

> So, I really do want to finish this whole story as a multi-length thing… but I may not have that much time to update now, since I’m working on my own book. But hopefully I can get back to it soon.


End file.
